Reply With QuoteSorry to hear that. Perhaps it will make you more considerate to older posters and not go tick tock on every post. RIP. Have you heard any more from or about Tricky?Originally Posted by Romanis
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Usually my favourite holiday of the year.
Unfortunately this year I'm not in a Christmassy mood.
2 losses in the family in quick succession has done me in.
Worst I dreamt of both of them last night.
Gloomy.
Yeah sorry this is a kind of self rant
First Team
Sorry to hear that. Perhaps it will make you more considerate to older posters and not go tick tock on every post. RIP. Have you heard any more from or about Tricky?
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Sorry to hear that Rom...and no idea what ‘adlestrop’s’ ill chosen words are about.
Christmas and New Year is always difficult in such circumstances but in answer to your question...I will be celebrating and indulging in the traditions of Christmas but not, in all honesty, actually observing the religious aspect of it.
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Adlestrop and his other aliases does seem obsessed with clocks, as I have noted his aversion to ticking before but also do not understand the seeming fear of ticking?
Does anybody observe any of the religious aspects of Christmas: sure a few more will go to church around then, but mainly because they like singing carols I suspect, or for the free mince pies. Or of course "to be seen doing the right thing". Not even the TV stations pay much heed to the religious aspects....
So in conclusion I think religion rather spoils Christmas.... Christmas should be a rampaging feast of consumerism, alcoholism and self indulgence, none of this *******s about some Mexican dude being born in a shed a couple of millennia ago... bothered?
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I had been looking for a PC nativity story I saw online last week involving Child Protection Services, Health and Safety Executive, the Immigration services, The police, an animal charity etc etc etc which applied modern Law to the nativity scene. Hilarious. Couldn't find it. If I do I will post it later. For now, have fun with the one printed underneath the url below.......
Stolen, unashamedly from http://www.words-etcetera.com/Christmas/xpcbirth.htm
A Politically Correct Christmas Story
And Joseph went up from Galilee to Bethlehem with Mary, his espoused wife, who was great with child. And she brought forth a son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn.
And an angel of the Lord spoke to the shepherds and said, "I bring you tidings of great joy. Unto you is born a Savior, which is Christ the Lord."
"There’s a problem with the angel," said a Pharisee who happened to be strolling by. As he explained to Joseph, angels are widely regarded as religious symbols, and the stable was on public property where such symbols were not allowed to land or even hover. "And I have to tell you, this whole thing looks to me very much like a Nativity scene," he said sadly. "That’s a no-no, too."
Joseph had a bright idea. "What if I put a couple of reindeer over there near the ox and ass?" he said, eager to avoid sectarian strife.
"That would definitely help," said the Pharisee, who knew as well as anyone that whenever a savior appeared, judges usually liked to be on the safe side and surround it with deer or woodland creatures of some sort. "Just to clinch it, throw in a candy cane and a couple of elves and snowmen, too," he said. "No court can resist that."
Mary asked, "What does my son’s birth have to do with snowmen?"
"Snowpersons," cried a young woman, changing the subject before it veered dangerously toward religion. Off to the side of the crowd, a Philistine was painting the Nativity scene. Mary complained that she and Joseph looked too tattered and worn in the picture. "Artistic license," he said. "I’ve got to show the plight of the haggard homeless in a greedy, uncaring society in winter," he quipped.
"We’re not haggard or homeless. The inn was just full," said Mary.
"Whatever," said the painter.
Two women began to argue fiercely. One said she objected to Jesus’ birth "because it privileged motherhood." The other scoffed at virgin births, but said that if they encouraged more attention to diversity in family forms and the rights of single mothers, well, then, she was all for them.
"I’m not a single mother," Mary started to say, but she was cut off by a third woman who insisted that swaddling clothes are a form of child abuse, since they restrict the natural movement of babies.
With the arrival of ten child advocates, all trained to spot infant abuse and manger rash, Mary and Joseph were pushed to the edge of the crowd, where arguments were breaking out over how many reindeer (or what mix of reindeer and seasonal sprites) had to be installed to compensate for the infant’s unfortunate religious character. An older man bustled up, bowling over two merchants, who had been busy debating whether an elf is the same as a fairy and whether the elf/fairy should be shaking hands with Jesus in the crib or merely standing to the side, jumping around like a sports mascot.
"I’d hold off on the reindeer," the man said, explaining that the use of asses and oxen as picturesque backdrops for Nativity scenes carries the subliminal message of human dominance. He passed out two leaflets, one denouncing manger births as invasions of animal space, the other arguing that stables are "penned environments" where animals are incarcerated against their will. He had no opinion about elves or candy canes. Signs declaring "Free the Bethlehem 2" began to appear, referring to the obviously exploited ass and ox. Someone said the halo on Jesus’ head was elitist.
Mary was exasperated. "And what about you, old mother?" she said sharply to an elderly woman. "Are you here to attack the shepherds as prison guards for excluded species, maybe to complain that singing in Latin identifies us with our Roman oppressors, or just to say that I should have skipped patriarchal religiosity and joined some dumb new-age goddess religion?" "None of the above," said the woman, "I just wanted to tell you that the Magi are here."
Sure enough, the three wise men rode up. The crowd gasped, "They’re all male!" and "Not very multicultural!"
"Balthasar here is black," said one of the Magi. "Yes, but how many of you are gay or disabled?" someone shouted.
A committee was quickly formed to find an impoverished lesbian wise-person among the halt and lame of Bethlehem. A calm voice said, "Be of good cheer, Mary, you have done well and your son will change the world." At last, a sane person, Mary thought. She turned to see a radiant and confident female face.
The woman spoke again: "There is one thing, though. Religious holidays are important, but can’t we learn to celebrate them in ways that unite, not divide? For instance, instead of all this business about ‘Gloria in excelsis Deo,’ why not just ‘Season’s Greetings’?" Mary said, "You mean my son has entered human history to deliver the message, ‘Hello, it’s winter’?" "That’s harsh, Mary," said the woman. "Remember, your son could make it big in midwinter festivals, if he doesn’t push the religion thing too far. Centuries from now, in nations yet unborn, people will give each other pricey gifts and have big office parties on his birthday. That’s not chopped liver."
"Let me get back to you," Mary said.
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BTW - When I was at Infant's School I always wondered why Jesus, born in Bethlehem, had been wrapped in Swadlincote.........
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One step further...... https://www.theguardian.com/science/...ience-accurate ...... the scientifically correct nativity story. Still not the one I am looking for but............ enjoy.
According to many scholars, the events of the nativity took place around 7 BC. Given that “BC” stands for “before Christ [was born]” and the nativity is the story of the birth of Christ, this means that Christ was born around 7 years before Christ was born.
This is actually one of the least illogical things to happen during the birth of Christ.
The Virgin Mary was betrothed to the carpenter Joseph. However, the Virgin Mary was pregnant with the Messiah. This occurred when Mary was visited by a heavenly angel named Gabriel who told her that she would become pregnant with a child who would be called Jesus, which is something of a self-fulfilling prediction; if an angel appeared and told you that an all-powerful God wanted your baby to be named Jesus, you’d probably go along with it. I recently met a child named “Audi”, so it doesn’t take much to influence this decision.
According to the Bible, Mary asked the angel how she could become pregnant when she was a virgin, and the angel Gabriel said to Mary that the Holy Spirit would “come upon you”.
In fairness, that’s surprisingly close for a book written by old celibate men 20 centuries ago.
Mary then told Joseph what had happened and that she was now pregnant. Scientifically, there are three possible explanations here:
The thing with the Angel and Holy Ghost is genuinely what happened.
Mary was actually some form of hitherto unknown human-plant or human-Komodo Dragon hybrid, capable of undergoing self-fertilisation.
Mary wasn’t a virgin and had fallen pregnant after sleeping with someone who wasn’t her partner Joseph, and came up with this fantastical story to explain it to Joseph rather than admit she’d been unfaithful, and Joseph subsequently believed her.
In truth, any one of these options would still count as a miracle, so the story is still intact.
Mary and Joseph then had to travel from Galilee, where they lived, to Bethlehem, where they needed to be. Reasons for why they had to make this journey remain unclear. Some say it was because of a tax, some say it was for a census, others say it never actually happened so why give a damn? But let’s ignore those humourless killjoys, and continue with this scientific critique of the nativity.
The distance between Galilee and Bethlehem is around 80 miles, according to Google maps, which takes around 2 days to travel on foot. Of course, Mary was heavily pregnant so her average speed would have been reduced. Of course, this is an optimistic estimate. Mary and Joseph wouldn’t have had google maps. They would have had to use some primitive equivalent like Streetmap or the AA Route Planner.
Upon arriving in Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph found that there were no rooms available. This casts doubt on the reason for their being there that they had to pay a tax. If everyone were in Bethlehem for a census then, judging by past observations, around 1% of the people there would be practising Jedi. As unlikely as it sounds, this would make for an even more exciting nativity. And of course, Anakin Skywalker was also the result of a virgin birth.
Mary and Joseph were unable to find somewhere to stay, which posed something of an issue because around this point Mary went into labour. They eventually ended up in a stable, surrounded by domesticated farm animals, which violates any number of health and safety protocols. When the baby was born, they swathed him in cloth and placed him in a manger.
For those who don’t know, a manger is somewhere where food for farm animals is kept. Ergo, Mary and Joseph placed their newborn baby, believed to be the saviour of mankind, in a container that animals eat out of, in front of the animals that usually eat out of it. At this point you have to wonder whether God almighty, in all his infinite wisdom, had chosen poorly when selecting potential parents.
While this happened, an angel appeared to some shepherds on a mountain near Bethlehem and told them a baby had been born and they should go and worship it. We can’t prove that this didn’t happen, but it’s probably worth mentioning that sparsely populated mountainous regions in the Middle East are ideal locations for growing opium, and shepherding can be a very boring job.
Also, three wise men from an unspecified Eastern country saw an unspecified bright object in the sky that led them to Bethlehem, where they somehow predicted they’d meet a messiah, as you do. They took gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Frankincense and myrrh are two fragrances used in aromatherapy and funerals respectively.
So, basically, three men followed an unspecified bright object over hundreds of miles of desert in order to meet a baby, about whom all they knew was that it would have a nose, might need money and would eventually die. For this they were considered "wise men". This goes to show that wisdom is clearly a subjective term.
As everyone gathered around the stable, a brightly lit host of angels appeared above it, starting a tradition of needlessly gaudy brightly lit decorations on domestic dwellings at Christmas that endures to this day. It is also traditional to have highly educated wise people at births too, but they’re known as “medical professionals”.
The end.
Dean Burnett ruins many things with science via Twitter, @garwboy
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Still not the one I am after but Larry the cable guy tells it PC...... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eidz4JD7F80
First Team
Your Christmas would be more in tune with the Roman Saturnalia renowned for a rampaging feast of overindulgence. Our Christmas is similar in that it used to celebrate the same astronomical event namely The Winter Solstice & the Rebirth of the Agricultural Cycle when people realised that the Sun was not going to drop into the Sea and we were going to have another season of crops.Along came the Christian missionaries and rewrote the whole event but somehow managed to mix it with Norse mythology in order to appease the natives.
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As they did with Isther, a Pagan fertility rite that included over indulgence and ***. Hence the egg and rabbit symbols.
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